Every Move Must Have a Purpose: Strategies from Chess for Business and Life

by Bruce Pandolfini

Book Overview

From the world-renowned chess teacher, a guide to applying the principles of the game to beating the competition in any endeavor.

Fluid and elegant, yet rigorous and rule-bound, chess is a game that seduces, confounds, and hooks. Now, world-renowned chess master and Fortune 500 business consultant Bruce Pandolfini shows readers how chess principles can be simply and logically applied to any business or life situation. No specific chess...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786868856
• ISBN13: 9780786868858
• Release Date: November 2003
• Publisher: Hachette Books
• Length: 115 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.8" x 8.6"
• Age Range: 18 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Postsecondary to Grade 12

Customer Reviews

This book , "Every move must have a purpose " was a complete disappointment and pretty much worthles

The book is a complete waste of time. No strategy, no moves, no offense no defense. A worthless book not worth the paper that it's printed on.

Packed With Knowledge!

This slim volume, which draws life and business lessons from the game of chess, is one of the better self-help and self-improvement books you're likely to pick up. At only 115 pages, double-spaced, and a mere 20,000 words, the entire book is about the length of a chapter in most other books in its category. Author Bruce Pandolfini includes just enough chess lore to keep the book relevant to chess, but not so much as to overwhelm a chess-averse reader. He writes concisely, as a chess player plays, with a great deal of concentration and quick, quiet decisions expressed in single sentences. The book offers several fine aphorisms, the sort you will remember long after you have put it down. But it's not the kind of book you will want to put down. Fortunately, we are glad to note, it is small enough to fit into a purse or computer bag along with everything else you carry.

A Brilliant Book

This is a brilliant book. ... It certainly has some useful things to say about business and strategic decision-making, but it is a chess book, written so clearly and universally that even a person focused solely on business and nothing else could still understand and benefit from it. It does not go into chess moves or combinations, although the few times he does talk about them he makes them come alive, such as: "Sometimes a move is right only because it's a little wrong," or "Some moves explain themselves." Pandolfini presents chess ideas so cogently that anyone can appreciate them and see their larger import: "To see what they see, sit where they sit." That is the beauty of what Pandolfini has done here. He has merged straight chess and general culture to appeal to everyone with a discriminating mind. Anyone can read it, even children. Anyone can gain from it, even people stuck in their office. But while the book reaches out to cultivated businesspeople, I see it as a chess book, one of the most stimulating I have encountered in many years.

Vivid Advice

Aphorisms like "A lawsuit is like a game of chess" have never been of much practical use to me (yeah, I am a lawyer) until I read Bruce's book. The chess analogy is now vivid. The chapters do not give a mechanical how-to, but rather a way to test what I am doing. For instance, "Strive for More Than You Need" is not a smart tactic in all cases, but " Should I Strive for . . ." is always a smart question. This book was useful and fun to read.

A Great Read!

I really liked this book. I thought Pandolfini's observations were very insightful, and some of them were truly elegantly expressed. But it's clearly not a chess book. Rather it seems to be a motivational book about business and especially life. Though most of the anecdotes were based on chess, they had parallels that anyone could identify with. I found some of the reviews of the book ridiculous because the writers were treating Mr. Pandolfini as if he had written a pure chess book. They seemed to be disappointed because there were no diagrams or instructional examples, when clearly that's not what Every Move Must Have A Purpose is about. Frankly, I think it's a wonderful volume and couldn't put it down, all the way from Newark to Los Angeles.--One who appreciates a great mind

The Longer Diagonal

The elegant technique of chess instructor Bruce Pandolfini was never more cogent than in his latest offering, Every Move Must Have A Purpose. The chapters are beautifully delineated by chess principles and deliver incisive applications of thinking methods that penetrate relations in business and other areas of life. He supports these ideas by referencing examples from historical chess moments and sharing insights from the breadth of his experience.